TY - JOUR T1 - Clinical heterogeneity in lymphoedema-distichiasis with<em>FOXC2</em> truncating mutations JF - Journal of Medical Genetics JO - J Med Genet SP - 761 LP - 766 DO - 10.1136/jmg.38.11.761 VL - 38 IS - 11 AU - Robert P Erickson AU - Susan L Dagenais AU - Mark S Caulder AU - Catherine A Downs AU - Gail Herman AU - Marilyn C Jones AU - Wilhelmina S Kerstjens-Frederikse AU - Andrew C Lidral AU - Marie McDonald AU - Christine C Nelson AU - Marlys Witte AU - Thomas W Glover Y1 - 2001/11/01 UR - http://jmg.bmj.com/content/38/11/761.abstract N2 - BACKGROUND Hereditary lymphoedema-distichiasis (LD) is an autosomal dominant disorder that classically presents as lymphoedema of the limbs, with variable age of onset, and extra aberrant growth of eyelashes from the Meibomian gland (distichiasis). Other major reported complications include cardiac defects, cleft palate, and extradural cysts. Photophobia, exotropia, ptosis, congenital ectropion, and congenital cataracts are additional eye findings. Recently, we reported that truncating mutations in the forkhead transcription family member FOXC2resulted in LD in two families. METHODS The clinical findings in seven additional families with LD, including the original family described by Falls and Kertesz, were determined and mutational analyses were performed. RESULTS Distichiasis was the most common clinical feature followed by age dependent lymphoedema. There is a wide variation of associated secondary features including tetralogy of Fallot and cleft palate. The mutational analyses identified truncating mutations in all of the families studied (two nonsense, one deletion, three insertion, and one insertion-deletion), which most likely result in haploinsufficiency ofFOXC2. CONCLUSIONS FOXC2mutations are highly penetrant with variable expressivity which is not explicable by the pattern of mutations. ER -